


Backwards in High Heels

by w3djyt



Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w3djyt/pseuds/w3djyt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minato considers herself good at her job. It has nothing to do with keeping Ryouma safe, however. </p><p>On the plus side, she has a front row seat to the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Interdimensional Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> Some musing from Youko's point of view throughout Gaim, mainly just because she's awesome and doesn't get a lot of introspective or backstory.
> 
> Special thanks to [Galiko](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Galiko/pseuds/Galiko), [daphnerunning](http://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning), and [BL_chan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BL_chan/profile) because this is all their fault.

Yggdrasill Corporation is everything she expected it to be, but somehow that doesn’t relieve any of the alert tension that creeps up her spine when her charge bounces into the room halfway through her briefing. Invasive plants spawned in interdimensional forests have nothing on Sengoku Ryouma and she’s pretty sure he knows it.

“Ah! You look even better in person!” is apparently his version of an introduction if the long suffering look carefully restrained to just the eyes of the man introduced to her as the head of Research and Development is any indication. The title can’t be true. She has learned not question her instincts on things like this. You don’t become a body guard for hire to corporations attempting to – a glance to the carefully worded brief still in hand – _save_ the world, without knowing what you could believe and what you couldn’t, after all.

“She _is_ the best candidate-“

“Yes, yes.” For a company ostensibly trying to _save_ the world, Sengoku Ryouma seems to have long since perfected the too-excited gleam of mad scientists the world over, though it is delivered with a crinkle around his eyes that seems to be from genuine laughter. Kureshima Takatora remains unimpressed, but allows the interruption amidst the flurry of movement that accompanies Ryouma darting around her like a tailor fastidiously testing measurements. He gives a little hum that sounds like success and bobs back around in front, hands thrust back into the pockets of his lab coat. “I trust you are accustomed to working in skirts and heels?”

“ _Ryouma-_ ” Kureshima begins again, and she quickly files _that_ away as he is interrupted once more.

“I _did_ specify a dress, of course, but I am willing to compromise with skirts.” Somehow, the excited, amiable air all but radiating from Ryouma does not seem to clash with the somewhat tired, yet firm and unyielding aura wrapped tightly around his superior. No matter how the combination seems to all but announce _this is why you need a bodyguard_.

Youko moves before another word can be said. Ryouma is slender, and though there is more muscle there than can be easily guessed by the outfit he wears, her judgment here is not wrong either. He lands on the floor with his hands still in his pockets and the air knocked out of him, but his head carefully cushioned by the top of her foot as she sets the heel silently to the floor again. “I can assure you, Professor, that I am entirely capable no matter my attire.”

“… She’ll do,” Ryouma says definitively, and his smirk is just as amused as it is calculating.

Behind her, Director Kureshima is only halfway successful stifling a snort.


	2. The Professor's Good Graces

Minato considers herself good at her job. It has nothing to do with keeping Ryouma safe, however. For all that the man absolutely needs a bodyguard, it is not her skills in that particular category that make the professor interested in keeping her around. Skirts and heels aside, Ryouma hasn’t much interest in bodyguards or her, no matter the very real threats surrounding them all, and the situations his tongue will get him into regardless. It’s unfortunate; controlling people is so much easier when they have an interest in you. Too bad for her that Professor Ryouma already holds that position himself.

Fortunately, she is rather talented at adapting.

“Are you _sure_ you know what you are doing?” The Director’s tone is just slightly more irritated than its neutral state, which is fairly impressive, really. She knows firsthand how those energy arrows well and truly burn. If she had not deliberately made the shot herself, his tone of voice would have easily convinced her his irritation was with the scientists and medical personnel swarming him and not the deceptively light burn mark on his suit.

“Recoil,” she says, holding her bow up with a shrug.

It’s impossible to see his expression through the helmet, but she is more interested in the baleful look being shot at her over an armored shoulder. Ryouma is always quick to supplant any other hands on Kureshima’s body with his own any time he has an excuse, and injury is an excellent excuse. Even if they both know the Director has not actually suffered one.

“… Five times in a row?”

She tilts her helmet deliberately to display a thoughtful aspect to her words, knowing the exaggerated movements make all the difference in these outfits even after only a few days’ work in them. “Perhaps it is a materials problem?” Her fingers glide over the edge of the bow. “I believe Professor Ryouma mentioned something about the instability of the discharge?”

The baleful look is turning more wryly amused, the quirk of his lips more pronounced even as his hands still on the undersuit. It’s a shame it melts completely into something wholly softer when Kureshima turns his helmet so he can catch sight of his lead scientist in a clear bid for more information. “I _do_ need some data on the effect of the energy blasts on _properly_ protected flesh,” he all but hums, flattening out an imagined crease in the undersuit, which Youko knows is more to do with getting his hands around muscles than any form of inspection.

Another unnecessary round of peach flavor floods her senses as she disengages the lockseed from her belt, but she is already too used to it to bother with commentary. There is no use in complaining, anyway, and he’s not going to tell her anything he has not already offered up on his own. “Then I will check with the team in Helheim.”

She considers it a success when the lab is still locked when she returns.


	3. Instinct

As it turns out, her instincts are even better than she gives them credit for.

That is not to say that she did not, on an intellectual level, consider there to be more than meets the eye when it comes to understanding Yggdrasill and the people at work therein. Suffice to say, however, the realization that the title of “Director of Research and Development” is less a lie and more not the whole truth is something she silently stews on for days after poking through some of the more classified documents left in her presence. The rest has more to do with precisely why she was left alone around such documents in the first place, but that, she has come to understand, has nothing to do with forgetfulness. Professor Ryouma does not leave loose ends. For all the man gleefully straddles the line between genius and insanity more joyfully than any other person she has been employed to protect, all she needs is a few days as his shadow to see how deliberate his actions remain.

The only thing he seems to forget about is himself.

Takeout orders and several harried interns is all it takes to add “food and water” to the list of tasks to stay abreast of in his presence. Unlocked tablets and administrator access to systems that have nothing to do with his research tell her the rest of the story. Academically, she knows it is a test but cannot help finding the information intriguing nevertheless. Perhaps more so than Helheim itself.

Unconquerable alien forests capable of wiping out the Earth’s population in a decade or less might not seem comparable to interpersonal relationships to most people, but then Minato is not most people. She has seen enough in her short life to know that no matter what is at stake, it is the human element that remains the most unpredictable and equally most important aspect of it all. There is no reason to expect that just because her work is needed now, that it will continue to be needed in the future and the more she sees, the more she knows it will be a future she will need to fight merely to exist in. When a situation becomes that dire, you don’t through your weight behind the person at the top: you find their pillars of support instead.

Ryouma is that pillar, and while he is certainly aware of it, for a time he remains content with that. He is a man striving for another and that, Youko will one day reflect, was the one thing keeping him on the brink with such ease.

It is also, she realizes far too late, the worst possible scenario for any of them to be in.


	4. The Beginning of the End

Director Kureshima is an idiot.

Director Kureshima is an idiot and he doesn’t even know the damage he’s done yet.

Youko has to wonder how he can miss the cold mania that settles in Ryouma’s eyes when he leaves the Director’s bedside for the first time that day. It has always been her experience that the biggest changes happen when you least expect them, and this is really no different. It was just another test. Belt tweaks to a suit the professor had been working on for some time. The injury was something Ryouma obsessed over for a few hours, but she could still pull him away. Still show him the information on the Overlords. Still give him something to tell the Director after all of it.

Really, she’s surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

Director Kureshima is an idiot, but Professor Ryouma is a genius and it’s going to be the death of them all.


	5. Half the Battle

She realizes she likes him a bit too late and that’s a problem and a shame in too many ways to count.

Ryouma is more than professionally ruthless, which is something she finds herself admiring against all better judgment. It’s all bundled up in science and blunted by Kureshima, though, and doesn’t come out in full force until the split. She can’t help appreciating how efficiently her charge wraps his hands around the very existence of the Overlords and locks it down with nary a whisper. There is something to be said for having the detachment needed to look at a situation for what it is and the people involved for what they can get you when your end goal is on the line.

Ultimately, that is what Takatora lacks, and the part of everything that just makes it such a problem. It wouldn’t be as bad if she could step in, but it is clear as day that Takatora was it. He was everything and he threw it away – threw it back at Ryouma, really, and no matter how many days pass and how often his brows furrow ever so slightly over something Ryouma says or does, it’s obvious he will never quite get it. Youko has never been fond of a world in black and white, but “not in time” is about as close as one can get to “never” and she starts making plans as such.

Which is really why it is all such a shame. She’s been in the business long enough to enjoy the sense of camaraderie Ryouma’s ruthless efficiency can breed. The professor can see it in her just as well, and she knows it is what keeps her in his circle when things get more complex. That, and her ability to neutralize his current threats, but that is only going to last so long. His drive for someone else has been redirected, and she’s fairly certain even he isn’t sure exactly where he is running at full speed. She does not doubt he is going to get there, though, and there is nothing about that she can’t appreciate.

That comes back to the problem, of course, because Ryouma _is_ the problem. He and Takatora both.

 _As usual_ , Minato appends weeks after Takatora has shattered Ryouma’s illusion of him and Ryouma throws himself into his work so he can overtake that pedestal himself. He speaks of evolution and Youko mentally switches out “save” for “change.” Talks of godhood and the unerring creep of war send her to the shadows again.

Chaos and betrayal is an environment she thrives in, but this time her relationship to it all is far too professional. She can see what is coming and doesn’t think to fear it. There are already plans in motion and battles being waged, and with Ryouma as a savior, who needs a villain, anyway? They don’t have that choice, of course, and are given a villain regardless. Betrayal happens regardless. Admiration happens regardless. The desperation and desire that usually drives the search for allies comes too late.

Everything about her around Professor Ryouma comes too late, and she can’t help but admire that too.


End file.
